Ready or Not, Time to Share More – NYTimes.com

Just when you thought you had finally figured out Facebook once and for all, here comes a whole new way to spend all your time tinkering with it. Over the next few weeks, every one of Facebook’s nearly one billion members will have their profile pages forcibly updated to an ambitious new layout that Facebook calls Timeline.

If you are a Facebook user, your page may not have Timeline yet. But once you have been upgraded, which will be soon, there will be no going back. So you might as well learn how it works.

Previously, Facebook’s profiles consisted of a single page of recent status updates. Now, your Timeline will present a navigable index of every single update and post you have ever made, should you wish to allow it. (If you don’t have Timeline yet and want to turn it on, you can do so facebook.com/timeline.)

Moreover, you can extend your Timeline to stretch back in time, adding additional posts dating to your birth, or even before. An interactive map plots the locations to which your posts are pegged. The company’s goal is simple: Get people to use Facebook to tell their life stories, and to mix real-world events — photos, videos, personal stories — with automated updates posted by apps.

If you’re eager to fashion the ultimate Timeline, there are a few tricks you should know.

“(With) a lot of these new technologies, there’s this element of addiction whether it’s cell phones or checking your e-mail or blog. Last year, everywhere I went, like cafes and wireless nodes, everyone was checking their Facebook, posting in their Facebook groups and e-mailing.” – David Silver